Tuesday, December 4, 2007

I went to a late concert Saturday night and knew I wanted to make a lot of things this weekend, so I decided to do some work before the show. The plan was to make some breadcrumbs and Pumpkin-Apple Butter (damn, do I ever love that butter. I think it was better last time I made it, though. I used apple cider and nutmeg this time. I also burnt it ever so slightly. Oops!

ANYWAY! While I was working on the butter, I loaded up the toaster oven with whole wheat bread. I then ignored the toaster oven, since it's supposed to ding and stop when it's done, right? I did check it once because it seemed like it was taking ages to get done, but the bread didn't look particularly dark. The sides of the toaster oven itself looked a little brown, though, and I was surprised I'd never noticed that before. I finished making the butter and went upstairs for a second. When I came down, there was smoke pouring out of our (now very brown) toaster oven, which contained several rectangular slices of charcoal. Obviously, the house stunk and needed a good airing (and it was FREEZING that night). I'm kind of concerned the smoke detector didn't go off, though.

Personally, I blame the toaster oven. I did the same thing the next day and had no trouble. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.